Mideast Fighting

WHENEVER a new war breaks out in the Middle East, or an old one is rekindled, the consequences are always unpredictable, with the exception of one - that the number of Christians in the region will be reduced even further.
The conflict which started in Lebanon on July 11, when Hezbollah fighters attacked and destroyed a Jewish military unit in Israeli territory, is reaping a continuous stream of human casualties despite the UN cease fire in force since August 13.
We do not know if, when the crisis is over, Israel will actually have succeeded in eradicating Hezbollah's offensive capacity, but we can already foresee that, at the end of the day, the Christian communities both in Palestine and in Lebanon will have paid the highest price for this latest round of fighting: many Christians will have left their homeland. This, at least, is what the history of the past century teaches.
In 1948 the Christian presence in Jerusalem numbered about 30,000 individuals. Under normal conditions that community would now have grown to 120,000 souls, instead they have dwindled to a mere 15,000 today. The situation is pretty much the same in the rest of the Holy Land. A century ago Christians made up 10 percent of the total population squeezed between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean, today they number just 2 percent.
In 1932, the date of the first and only census, 63 percent of the overall Lebanese population was Christian, most of whom Maronite, with Muslims making up 35 percent, and the rest belonging to other minorities. Then, by the beginning of the 70s, the Christian presence had diminished to 43 percent, and recent estimates number the current figure to be less than 32 percent.
According to some studies, prior to 2003 Iraq had over a million Christians, but today that number has been halved. Many Iraqi Christians have emigrated, others have sought refuge in the north of the country, in the regions inhabited by the Kurds, who respect Christians and are willing to offer them sanctuary.
The massacres and deportations which took place in Turkey in the last century have always targeted Christians - be they Greek or Armenian.
The nations of the Middle East were born in a climate of constant strife and warfare, and have been bred in an atmosphere of religious and ethnic tensions; it is clear that, in such situations, those most afflicted have been the weakest sectors of society, those who have no one to defend them - women, children, the elderly... and the Christian communities.
The Jews who were driven away from Arab and European countries have found refuge in Israel; the Palestinians have also experienced their diaspora, but were received by other Arab countries. On the other hand, Christians in the Middle East have been faced only with the alternative of fleeing to the West. They, an Eastern people, have been obliged to become Westerners, only to be accused of being pro-Western by the very ones who drove them away.
Today's modern nationalistic wars are succeeding where even early militant Islam did not succeed in its heyday: to wipe Christianity off the face of the Middle East.
It is not noticed that, in this way, that war torn region loses the only community capable of mediating, with its cultural heritage and political strategy, between Israel and the Arab world, the only entity which is capable of smoothing the tensions between East and West.
To drive Christians away means to increase the danger and the brutality of the next wars: this is what history teaches in profusion, but are there enough ears willing to hear this lesson?